A DRUG addict mother whose two-year-old son died after drinking her methadone has told a jury she believed it was put out of his reach.

Sally Dent and her partner Shaun Binfield, of Kilbourne Road, Belper, deny the manslaughter of their son Riley Pettipierre.

They found him lifeless on their bed at 10.30am on March 13 last year, after he drank methadone from a child’s beaker.

Dent, 33, told the jury at Nottingham Crown Court earlier today, that at about 2am on that day, she had indicated, with her eyes, to Binfield to put the beaker of methadone on top of a CD rack on some chest of drawers.

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She said: “(I intended for him to put it on) the CD rack, because in our bedroom we have a little television which was Riley’s for cartoons and we put the remote for the tv on top of the CD rack because we knew he couldn’t reach it. It was 4ft high.”

Dent also denies cruelty to a child under 16 – it is alleged she failed to keep Riley away from class A drugs other than on the occasion of March 13.